Chapter 13

Summary:

While money is the main motivator, there are many benefits to working, such as: better health, sense of accomplishment and usefulness, source of social identity, sense of stability and order, as well as other social and economical benefits. A few macro-level factors for the recent downward slide of the economy are:

• deindustrialization: process of social and economic change resulting from the reduction of industrial activity, especially manufacturing.
• globalization: the growth and spread of investment, trade, production, communication, and new technology around the world.
• offshoring: the sending of work or jobs to another country to cut a company's costs at home.

While our economy is having its problem, it is effecting individuals differently. The rich are getting richer, the middle class is struggling, and the poor are getting poorer.

Families are having a hard time surviving. To keep their families afloat, many people are taking low-wage jobs where they are making $6.55 to $7.25 an hour, or they are working nonstandard work hours. Nonstandard work hours are during the weekends, late night, early mornings, evenings. Part-time employment used to be an option for people who did not want to work more hours, but now part-time work is the only type of work that some people can find. Then there are the people who are without jobs and/or currently looking for jobs. Some people find that the hunt for a job is pointless and then there are other people who have part-time job that want full time jobs, or they have jobs that are beneath their education or skill level.

Due to unemployment, poverty is very common. Two ways to define poverty are as follows:

• absolute poverty: not having enough money to afford the most basic necessities of life such as food, clothing, and shelter
• relative poverty: not having enough money to maintain an average standard of living

The poverty line is the minimum level of income that the government considers necessary for basic subsistence. Some argue that this line is inflated because it does not include noncash benefits that one may have. While others argue that the line is to low because it does not take into consideration the needs of the poor people, such as daycare. Children are twice as likely to be poor than older adults. Of the adults who are poor, 57% of them are women; there is a likelihood that female head if households will be poor. Many of the people who are poor, are of racial-ethnic minorities; African-American, Latino, and American Indians are twice as likely to be poor, compared to their White and Asian-American counterparts. Some families are so poor that they are, in fact, homeless.

Some families work out different ways in which they provide able to continue providing for their family:

1. two-person single career: one spouse, typically the wife, participates in the partner's career behind the scenes, without pay or recognition
2. stay-at-home dads:the rare men who stay home to care for the family and dot he housework while their wives are the wage earners
3. dual-earner couples: both partners work outside the home
4. dual-career couples: both partners work in professional or managerial positions that require extensive training, a long-tern commitment, and ongoing professional growth
5. trailing spouse: the partner who gives up his or her work and searches for another position in the location where the spouse has taken a job
6. commuter marriages: married partners live and work in different geographic areas and get together at various intervals, such as over weekends.

Once someone find works they may still encounter difficulties such as the gender pay gap and sexual harassment (verbal, nonverbal, physical contact). On a brighter note, many company are offering ways to accommodate mother by allowing them to care for their babies at the workplace, flextime (allows workers to change their daily arrival and departure times), and telecommuting (working from home through electronic linkups to the central office).

New Things:

I did not know there were some company that let women bring their children to work, and they were actually right beside their baby instead of it being in a daycare or nursery that was in the building.

Discussion:

I want to know if the class has any ideas as to why in 2011 their is still a gender pay gap.